Have you ever wondered what to do with your old, orange, #5 plastic prescription bottles? Most municipal recycling programs do not accept them. The City of Seattle most assuredly does *not*, citing the orange plastic as "too brittle to recycle", even though they accept other forms of #5 plastic.

The orange bottles that hold prescription medication are typically made of polypropylene, also known as PP or by the resin code #5. Polypropylene is the plastic of choice for many food manufacturers and can also be used to make fabric and household products like carpeting and roof membranes.

The tough thing about reusing the pill bottles though, is that they should not hold food products, lest leftover medication make its way into food. Add that to the difficulty of disposing of leftover painkillers, antibiotics, sleep medication and antidepressants, and finding a way to deal with medicine bottles in an eco-friendly manner can seem like a lost cause. However, there is hope: Matthew 25: Ministries.

Specifically, the pill bottles go to developing countries where rural pharmacies may have the medications on hand, but no way to give them to the patients other then filling up those patients' hands or pockets with the pills, which in turn, that get lost on the way home. Can you imagine if you went to the Walgreen's counter and the only way to take home your meds was to have the pharmacist dump the pills loose in your purse?